“The city’s attorneys can argue anything they want. Someone needs to go to prison for the Eimers killing.”

“What bothers me the most about the Eimers’ murder case against our Key West Police Department is that I do not hear any remorse about this tragic incident.”

During closing citizen comments at the end of the second most recent city commission meeting, I told Mayor Cates and the six city commissioners that their failure to express public remorse and apologize to the Eimers family was outrageous, it was unconscionable, and they should resign.

That got mentioned in local popular TV host Jenna Stauffer’s

and my interview last Thursday, which you should be able to watch today by clicking on this link:

I didn’t speak loudly enough in parts of the interview, which can be fixed by increasing the volume before you watch the video.

The interview starts with Jenna telling the viewing audience that I say I am a political terrorist. Then, she tells the audience that I said at Hometown! PAC’s Call to Candidates, that anyone who wants to be Mayor of Key West is insane. After we talk some about why I’m running yet again for Mayor of Key West (I blame my dream maker, again), the interview wends its way to the death of Charles Eimers last Thanksgiving Day.

Yesterday’s Wizard of Oz post at this website included Mayor Craig Cates’

Craig

answers to Mark Howell of KONK Life’s candidate questionnaire.

Mark

Mark had told me in an email that they would try to include my answers to the questionnaire in the same issue they ran Mayor Cates’ answers. That did not happen yesterday. Here again are Mark’s questions and my answers:

KONK Life, the leading purveyor of news and opinion locally, invites each and every candidate in the upcoming elections to answer the following 20 questions about themselves and their candidacy. In fairness to all, the questions are the same for all.

We advise you cut-and-paste our Q&A into a desktop file of your own just in case you encounter a formatting error when using this “Candidate.doc” for your answers.

Q: Tell us your name, age, what office you’re running for and any previous offices held.

A: Sloan Bashinsky, 71 Earth years, Mayor of Key Far West of Weird, no previous offices held, but have been accused of being the head lunatic in various places on this planet and elsewhere

Q: Explain your platform in a couple of short paragraphs plus why you are running:

A: I am running because angels of the Lord told me to run if I knew what was good for me.

As for my platform:

Key West needs a great deal more affordable rental housing, and if a waitress can’t afford it on her wages, it’s not affordable; Key West needs a lot more affordable elder housing, and if an elder can’t afford it on his/her income, it’s not affordable; ban cruise ships from Key West, they pollute the sea with their wastes and silt the channel, it was a mistake to let them call on Key West to begin with; all new development and redevelopment is solar-powered to the maximum extent possible; mandatory recycling with teeth; yard waste composted and reused locally; treated wastewater recycled for irrigation; scrap the Truman Waterfront plan and turn that land into community gardens and affordable rental housing; pay Bahama Village market rate for the Truman Waterfront acreage designated to Bahama Village, which the city swiped; lower Duval Street becomes pedestrian/artisan/food mall mid-afternoon on; Angela Street is not integrated into the new Peary Court development; revamp Tree Commission which long has terrorized private property owners; revamp Historical Architectural Review Commission to allow solar panels and construction materials termites do not ravage; stop letting KW police officers moonlight in city bars and strip joints, where drug trafficking is rampant and they participate in it; stop wasting taxpayer money trying to force homeless people to change or leave the area; provide a drunk tank for homeless addicts and a night shelter for other homeless people; keep ever in mind Jesus in the Gospels was homeless and told his disciples, as they did to the least of the people around them, they did also to him.

Q: Detail how you differ from your competing candidates:

A: I’m doing that in my answers to your questions.

Q: Tell us us your personal history — education; professional career; family life and how long you’ve lived in the Keys or the county and your relationship to the Florida Keys and/or Key West:

A: B.A., Economics, Vanderbilt University, 1965; J.D., University of Alabama School of Law, 1968; L.L.M, in Taxation, University of Alabama School of Law, 1979. Practiced law in Alabama, 1973-1985. I wrote maybe 20 books, non-fiction, fiction, verse. I was born and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in a prominent family, had a younger brother and sister. In 1964, I married my Vanderbilt Sweetheart, and we had a son, who died in infancy, and then two daughters. Seven marriages in all, now single. Except for a short afternooner with a Cudjoe Key biker chick in 2010, at her invitation, I’ve been a monk since early 2005. My family drove to Key West in 1952, when I was nine; I remember very little of that trip, we only stayed one day and headed back up the Keys. In 1956, my family spent spring break at the Ocean Reef Club on Key Largo, and that’s when I got hooked on flats fishing. We came back the next spring vacation and stayed in Islamorada. I got even more hooked on flats fishing. We came back again in August 1961, and stayed at a private home on Lower Matacumbe Key. That’s when I became hopelessly in love with the Keys. In early 1962, that home came on the market and my father bought it and owned it until 2001, when he sold it because he no longer was able to come down to the Keys. After he bought that home, I came down Islamorada a good bit to fish and kick back. Sometimes I drove down to Key West, which was like going to the wild west. I came to Key West to live in late 2000. I was homeless, lived on the street. For reasons the angels have yet to explain, there is spirit block on my making a living wage. En route to Key West, I was told in a dream I was going to be getting into politics, and I awoke in shock, I hated politics. Another long story cut short. I got into Key West politics, and ran for mayor in 2003, 2007 and 2009. I ran for the County Commission in 2006, 2008 and 2010, and for the School Board in 2012. It’s probably fair to say I’m dowsed in Key West and Florida Keys politics. Valentine’s Day 2006, I received an inheritance from my father, who had died the previous August. I was relieved in the near future from being homeless.

Q: Touch on your personal passions in addition to the above:

A: Today, my passions are trying to keep happy the angels who abducted me in early 1987 and turned me inside out and upside down and every which a way but loose for a long time through now with no end in sight. Sometimes it’s fun, mostly it’s a lot of hard work. One of the angels claims to be Jesus. Another claims to be Archangel Michael. Another claims to be Magdalene-Melchizedek. They are the three main ones; sometimes they let others in their circle have at me.

Q: Describe where, in your view, we are going wrong in the Keys and/or Key West:

Q: Tell us the political flash points you expect to encounter if elected:

A: homelessness, police brutality, public corruption, and any and all political flash points stated in prior and following answers

Q: Tell us anything you feel you need to explain or any misapprehension you believe voters may have of you:

A: I am explaining a lot in my answers to your questions. I imagine many people in Key West and the Keys, who know or know of me, have apprehension about me. Besides my “platform” and “flash points”, people do not like hearing me say angels tell me what to do and get onto me when I mess up. Nothing I can do about that. The angels are a lot bigger and more powerful and heaps smarter than I am.

Q: Give us your view on the partisan divisiveness in politics today and any solution to it you might have:

A: I don’t belong to a political party. This is a political joke, okay? I would make belonging to a political part a capital offense punishable by being chopped up into small pieces and fed to baby sharks in an effort to stem the extinction of that endangered species, the loss of which major sea predator will wreak havoc in Mother Nature’s oceans – fortunately, the Key West city races are non-partisan.

Q: Given that gender equality, income parity, voting rights and sexual preferences continue as big political issues nationwide today, tell us on which side of the aisle you stand:

A: Equal rights and, based on ability and willingness to work, equal pay for everyone, regardless of skin color, ethic background, sex, sexual orientation, religious preference or lack thereof. You left out women wishing to terminate their pregnancies. I say, in the early states of pregnancy, that’s their decision alone. I think, at the level of soul, it’s usually best for a woman to go to term and put her unwanted child up for adoption. As for the religious argument, it says in the beginning of Genesis that man became a living being when God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. Before the first breath, man was not a living being. In my unpublished novel Br’er Rabbit Meets the Devil, the hero, a black lawyer, argued in a Birmingham federal court, successfully, that passage means life begins at the first breath of life.

Q: And how about immigration, gun control and capital punishment:

A: Native Americans are best qualified to answer the immigration question. This following is a political joke, okay? We bring the troops home from foreign lands, station them in the Florida Keys and along the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific US mainland coasts, and along the US-Mexico border, where they shoot on sight any person they suspect of being homeless. I doubt guns can be controlled. If you don’t believe me, ask the Pentagon, the F.B.I., or any member of the National Rifle Association. Ask Jesus how he feels about capital punishment. I would prefer to be executed, than spend the rest of my days in prison. You did not ask where I stand on stupid ruinous American foreign wars. I’m against.

A: Tie: Naja and Arnaud Girard, Key West the Newspaper – www.thebluepaper.com, published each Friday. They deserve a Pulitzer for breaking and covering the KWPD conduct unbecoming toward Charles Eimers case.

Q: Your favorite book:

A: Tie: The Spear of Destiny, by Trevor Ravenscroft, and Mutant Message Down Under, by Marlo Morgan – although I kinda like the last novel to fall out of me, HEAVY WAIT: A Strange Tale, which was inspired by a dream I had in Key West in late April 2001, as I slept on flattened cardboard boxes in a doorway just down from the Island Bookstore on Fleming Street, back when homeless people still could sleep outside at night without being harassed and/or arrested and jailed by KW police. While the strange tale was coming through me, I told friends God was writing it. Mark, you read Heavy Wait and told me you liked it. Available in English at amazon.com and in Spanish at amazon.com.es, paper and kindle.

Q: Your favorite character in American history:

A: Abraham Lincoln

Q: Your favorite person in Florida Keys and/or Key West history:

A: Tie: Capt. Tony Tarracino and St. Dorothy Sherman, who started the soup kitchen

Q: Your favorite quote or proverb:

A: Tie: “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;” “I’m fucked,” Wiley Coyote .

Q: Is there any secret strength you’d like to reveal about yourself at this point:

A: If I discover it, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, how about there are no fig leaves in Paradise, nor any secrets – that’s another of my favorite sayings.

PLEASE
attach a photo of yourself.

Thank you!

moi having breakfast at Harpoon Harry’s in Key West, early 2014

moi maiming Jackie Bush-Holcomb and her mom at Harpoon Harry’s the day before yesterday

Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Political advertisement paid for and approved by Sloan Bashinsky, for Mayor of Key West, aka “southernmost the nut house”

About Sloan

Darn, that would take a while. Try the autobiographical pages in the header. Ditto for header menu pages at www.goodmorningbirmingham.com. Hatched and raised there, eventually I ran away from home.
Here's a short list: Born 1942; male; single; accused of all sorts of imaginable and unimaginable things, perhaps some true. Live on Key West of Weird asteroid. Publish something most days on this website, been at that since July 2007. That's heaps of catch-up reading, probably not recommended.